The Vermont House gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a bill that makes it easier for state prosecutors to seize and sell assets associated with crimes related to drugs and animal fighting.
The Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs backs the bill, S.102, as a way to take large amounts of cash they find on drug dealers when they are arrested and use the money to fund substance abuse treatment programs for Vermonters.
Earlier versions of S.102 described the bill as an animal-fighting measure, and the version that passed the Senate would have let Vermont prosecutors seize and sell assets worth less than $25,000 from a person who had not been convicted of a crime.
Following pushback from the public and the ACLU of Vermont, the Senate renamed the bill to clearly describe S.102’s drug-related asset forfeiture provisions, and the House Judiciary Committee stripped the administrative forfeiture provision completely.
Under the new bill, the state could still take personal property from convicted persons with a judge’s approval. Sixty percent of the proceeds would go to the state’s general fund.
The governor’s Criminal Justice and Substance Abuse Council would allocate the remaining 40 percent among the Attorney General’s Office, the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs and “state and local law enforcement agencies.”
At the request of Defender General Matt Valerio, the House Judiciary Committee took Valerio’s office off the list of recipients for the 40 percent.
Valerio said it would have been “unethical” for his office to receive money that the state obtained by selling his clients’ assets. He estimated “conservatively” that at least half of the people he defends are charged with a drug-related crime, and said lawmakers may have put his office on the recipient list to make the bill “more palatable.”
Most of the asset forfeiture language left in the House version of S.102 would amend Vermont’s existing judicial forfeiture process. Training an animal to fight would still be added to the state’s animal cruelty laws, as in the original bill, and the state would still establish a special task force on animal cruelty.
Dave Cahill, executive director of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs, compared the proposed forfeiture process in an April interview to taking money that drug dealers receive from addicts and using the money to help addicts avoid the legal system when they are charged with using drugs.
“More often than not, we’re talking about cash that is on the person and in the immediate presence of a person who is accused of and subsequently convicted of a drug trafficking offense,” Cahill said.
“When the police seize the cash, call it $5,000, what are they to do with it during the pendency and at the end of the case?” he asked. “At the end of the process, do they just give the cash back to the drug dealer and say ‘Have a nice day?’”
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont, said in an email Tuesday that the organization remains opposed to the asset forfeiture provisions of the bill.
“The changes take Vermont in a different direction than the rest of the country,” Gilbert said. “Other states [such as New Mexico] are reforming their statutes following stories of abuse of the forfeiture system – not expanding them.”
The bill’s third reading is scheduled for Wednesday morning. If approved, the Senate could either accept the House changes or call for a conference committee.
